My Forum

I'm exactly the same Caro! Part of me loves the idea of home educating because of the freedom, and all the positive stuff, and the hippiness of it all...but unfortunately (or fortunately?) I can also see the reality, which is that it would be an unmitigated disaster!

Caro - I have just listened to that series of videos you linked...whilst pottering with my sewing things in a rare 30 minutes of time just to make ME happy - the last video totally validated my choice not to do housework!!! I really liked what she has to say, and ordered the book last night so am looking forward to reading it. I especially liked the bit about not scheduling too many activities and about not being a tiger mother. I thought I was just being a bit lazy, but that 'crazy busy' feeling she describes is exactly how having too many things to do and too many places to go makes me feel, and I know I can't be happy like that, and therefore by extension, can't make my children happy. I definitely need to work on the internal motivation, and making tasks fun - how do you make putting on socks/shoes/doing hair fun when you have a limited amount of time and 3 children to get out of the door??!

Isabelle gets given fruit or carrots for school snack. She says they're just whole carrots, which they eat as they come!

Mine seem to have shrunk their repertoire of 'acceptable' meals (all my doing, I'm sure!), but I'm determined to get them eating more again. They'll eat vegetables, but have also become rather fond of the chicken chunks in breadcrumbs - which isabelle insists on calling chicken goujons (I just know we're going to feature on the 'overheard in waitrose' website soon!!) - and fish finger type meals. The small ones eat a huge range of stuff at nursery so I know they will...I just need to find the energy to make different stuff at home.

Hope your back is feeling better soon Caro, and glad work went ok. My appraisal is coming up so I'm also on the cpd point trail - we have a requirement to get 50 points (equals 50 hours) per year, and it's hard to do without spending money on it!